"The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it ever has contained, contains, or ever will contain. That is the native city to which we owe our love." --Simone Weil

Friday, July 30, 2010

More on God and Aesthetics

Just now, as I was preparing for my fall philosophy of religion course, I stumbled across an article, Aesthetic Arguments for the Existence of God by Peter Williams, which touches on many of the same issues that we have been wrestling with here, and so may be of interest to readers of this blog.

That said, I don't think William's take on these issues is going to change anyone's views--and, I suspect, won't even do much to convince those who think this line of thinking is intellectually bankrupt to rethink the premises from which they reach that conclusion. It's more of a survey article combined with a sketch of a philosophical case than it is a rigorous philosophical argument in its own right. But I like the taxonomy of aesthetic arguments that Williams offers (I think it would be an interesting exercise to go through the arguments that have been sketched out by commenters on my two Music and Spirituality posts, to see how they fit into this taxonomy).

I also think the article may have some value just insofar as it offers a different perspective from which to understanding the experiential starting points and assumptions that can lead someone to find a theistic worldview most conducive to making sense of beauty.

“Our big difference seems to be that you are asserting meaning can not develop from a purely physcial picture of the world. I don't yet understand what you mean by this, or why it seems like a contradiction to you.”

Why would “meaning” be necessary in a non-personal, meaningless, purposeless accidental, chance universe? How would it arise? Meaning assumes a destiny, a fulfillment, a purpose, a reason, something that matters beyond simply surviving (otherwise prison life would be the same as being “free”). We need more than the idea that we can “create” meaning. I need you to step back and tell us why would even need to do so in the first place, how it would even come up in such a universe (See the point below noted by Schaeffer from the Williams’ article). Further, why would we create something which can have no fulfillment? As noted also in the Williams article:

…but it was left to C.S.Lewis to present it as an argument for the Heaven of `eternal life' with God:

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. . . If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” (Continued)

(Continued) So, that is why I believe it to be a contradiction to hold on the one hand, a belief that the universe is ultimately meaningless, purposeless, accidental, and non-personal, but on the other hand believe that I have desires (for meaning, love, hope, beauty, goodness), which could never arise or be fulfilled in that universe. In my mind that is contradictory. I think part of the problem is that you may believe that “meaning” has nothing to do with truth or reality, while I think “meaning” is only meaningful or significant if it is a reflection of what is ultimately true and real.

In fact, I think most philosophers and most people use “meaning” in that way. If I were to say that my love for my wife was “meaningful” to me, but not true, in my mind, that would be a contradiction. I hold the same to be true in our views of the universe and physical reality and our experience of that reality. I have a hard time thinking I could find meaning in what I truly believed to be a lie.

“Now we may have a difference as regards to how meanings are achieved. I believe that meanings are made, not given. And, although their power certainly depends on the confidence we have on our world view, meaningfulness does not depend, in my view, on the truthfulness of that word view (as long as we believe it of course).”

“On the other hand I am under the impression that you link the notion of meaningful life to the truthfulness of the underlying world view. On this view, you cannot honestly accept that my life is as meaningful as yours…”

I do link the notions—like most philosophers and I think most people on the street, as it were, do as well. But, because I do, such is what allows me to accept that your life is indeed as meaningful—something I could not do if I held your position. If I believed we all just created our own meaning (whether it was to find it in serving or find it in taking), if they were all equally on the same plane of being “only in our head” none higher or lower than another, then I would not care one way or the other. I can believe you to be wrong but still think you have a sense of meaning and that your life is indeed meaningful, but I can do that only because I truly believe such about reality and what it means to be human.

“I may not have used the term “theist” at the time (as probably too abstract) but my faith was deep and sincere. And I had to let go because the more I learned about science and the world, the less my religious world view made sense to me…”

I would suggest it wasn’t that “science” per-se, changed your view, but a certain view of “science.” I don’t think “science” has the ability to prove the existence or non-existence of God; there is no fact or piece of evidence out there that does either. I think there is something deeper going on when one makes a decision in such matters.

“I think you vastly underestimate the difficulties raised by a theistic position. I will try to elaborate on this soon but I have to go for now.”

You may be right, but I would counter that for whatever difficulty a theistic position raises, the difficulties raised by naturalism are far, far greater. Do you appreciate the difficulties of your own position? From the article by Williams:

“No one, says Schaeffer, has ever worked out how to obtain the personal from the impersonal (a feat that would involve getting the greater from the lesser). Thirty years of thought since Schaeffer produced his `cultural apologetic' has not improved matters for the naturalists. Philosopher William Hasker concludes that `naturalism experiences severe difficulties in its attempt to explain the phenomena of humanness. . . [whereas] in the universe as conceived by theism, the existence of these distinctive attributes of humanness is far less surprising.'

JP--You raise an interesting question: "What would it take for anybody to change his/her views?"

If a disagreement takes place not on the level of basic worldviews but within a sharted worldview and a shared set of criteria for evaluating rival views, then views can change pretty quickly (if grudgingly) as soon as one side to the disagreement demonstrates that their position fits best with the criteria of evaluation (as such, we have disputes about when an historical event happened settled by looking in an encyclopedia, disputes about rival scientific hypotheses settled by an appropriate experiment, and disputes about what Jesus said settled--among fundamentalists--by consulting the Bible).

The real issue is what does it take for someone to change his or her views about these basic framing beliefs--the beliefs which determine, among other things, what is to count as evidence.

People DO change their views even on this level, of course. They convert TO a religion or de-convert FROM one. They grow up passionate Christians and then go thtrough a crisis experience that leads them to atheism--or, in my case, they move from an atheist/agnostic position to a theistic one.

I know that arguments are not irrelevant to such changes. But it is rare to find someone who, confronted with a few powerful arguments, changes their view. After all, at this basic level most rival arguments end up in one way or another presupposing the alternative perspective (its epistemic criteria, etc.) and so begging the question.

As I see it, radical changes happen when--usually after extended exposure to arguments and ideas from an opposing perspective, someone finds themselves FINALLY able to REALLY see how the world looks through that alternative perspective--and they find that this alternative perspective makes elements of their experience fit together in a way that they just hadn't before--or they experience a sense of liberation and wholeness that they hadn't felt when they looked at and understood their experience through their old perspective.

Of course, much of the time real understanding of an alternative perspective provides no such life-changing moment. Often it only leads to an appreciation of why a reasonable person might look at things that way--or it leads to the sense that there is SOMETHING captured by the alternative worldview that is missing from one's own and so leads to a kind of synthesis or at least a modification of one's old worldview.

Sometimes, the latter kind of change--an evolution of one's worldview--occurs without encountering an opposing worldview. It occurs because it becomes increasingly difficult to make one's old worldview "fit" with one's experience taken holistically. This, once again, brushes up against Hegel.

Thanks for your comments. I will not return to the specifics now but instead try an idea, related to the question I asked in my first comment above and to something Eric mentions in his answer. I think it may be relevant to the discussion we're having.

The idea is in fact very simple. It is this: successful world views may have within them “features” that somehow preempts the possibility of moving towards other world views. In effect, these successful world views would be equilibrium points in the space of all possible world views.

I am not sure how that would work but here's a possibility: we evaluate world views by putting questions to them, by having requirements they must meet. When we say that a world view “makes sense” we mean that it satisfies our requirements. But these requirements don't exist independently of world views – they are part of it. Successful world views may have evolved in this manner, through a process of continuous feedback between requirements and the contents of the world view, culminating in a situation in which the world view defines requirements that are satisfied precisely only by this world view. The direct consequence is that competing world views will not meet these requirements as well and will seem to make “less sense”.

To summarize: we evaluate world views by using requirements that are part of our own world view and that are fully satisfied only by it. World views that have this property will be more successful than others and will end up dominating the world view “market place”. This obviously makes changing world view (or even appreciating the strengths of another world view) very difficult.

Thanks for that. It would seem this is a difference of intuition, on one level at least, and that our world views are popping out quite different sets of starting assumptions. Nevertheless, perhaps I can unpack mine for you a little more.

For me, when I say something is meaningful, I am trying to represent a particular feeling I undergo. It is linked, I suspect, to the feeling of a particular concept resonating with other concepts I hold, so there is a fit somehow to it, and it is also associated I am sure with certain chemical responses to that fit, it is in part emotional. Now part of that fit is not for me an association with a concept of truth, because that's a concept that is very unclear in my head and doesn't tend to resonate with anything at all.

An educationalist once explained knowing to me in these same terms. One student may know two quarters is equivalent to a half, another may not, but may be able to work it out. Knowing, this chap suggested, is just a level of familiarity that comes to feel like certainty. The connections are so well established and consistent that the fact comes to feel true without examination.

Your other intuition is that we can not have a desire for something (food, true meaning) if that thing does not exist. In evolutionary terms this does not appear to be the case. If a sense of meaning is a mechanism for creating satisfaction and reward at developing consistent and connected world views, then the survival advantage is very clear, even if the feeling of truth and absolute truth are disconnected. I once read a psychologist who suggested that our capacity for metaphor represented the single biggest leap in the development of the human mind.

I suspect this will not resonate with you at all, it will not feel meaningful. It is perhaps too great a step though to call my view contradictory. All it contradicts is your intuition, within my own world view it is logically consistent.

This leads on nicely to JP's question and Eric's response. Why would somebody change a worldview? All I have time to add to that discussion right now is the observation that some world views have changed almost universally. Few, when exposed to the alternative, continue to hold that the world is flat. In this respect I would maintain that the peculiar power of these types of shifts should be explained by our own world view if we are to strive for consistency (while recognising that for some, consistency is at best a murky virtue).

“…successful world views may have within them “features” that somehow…”

“…we evaluate world views by putting questions to them, by having requirements they must meet.”

And rightly JP you note that, “But these requirements don't exist independently of world views – they are part of it.”

And let me point out a good example of this. Above you note the word “successful.” Unless you simply mean, "world-views that survived” there must be some criteria you are thinking of. And here one must already have a preconception or presupposition of an idea of what it means to be “successful.” Here again I think a naturalistic world-view cannot help us because it can only really tell us that what is “successful” is what survives, which besides amounting to a tautology, would make “successful” mean anything, even the exact opposite of what we normally mean. If we were to extrapolate and apply such logic culturally, what if the Nazis win, does that make them successful? (Continued)

(Continued) But something could survive, just exist, without music, art, music, poetry, literature, drama, and beauty in general. None of those are necessary for pure survival (in fact, one could make the argument they endanger survival because they take focus and time away from skills/activities more suited toward pure survival). So, why would a mechanism select for such? A mechanism that was purely a survival guidance feature, one would think, might select for strength, speed, stealth, or similar advantages, and for features that tended toward no mercy or empathy toward competitors. Since things like art, music, poetry, and literature often work to soften us and prick us toward notions such as mercy, forgiveness, and empathy for the other, we should actually expect for any such a mechanism to build us toward not producing, appreciating, or even understanding those components of beauty.

I do agree with you (if I understood you correctly) that none of us simply sit back and objectively view the “facts” and the “evidence” but everything is of one piece and we interpret the “facts” and “evidence” through our world-views.

“Your other intuition is that we can not have a desire for something (food, true meaning) if that thing does not exist. In evolutionary terms this does not appear to be the case. If a sense of meaning is a mechanism for creating satisfaction and reward at developing consistent and connected world views, then the survival advantage is very clear, even if the feeling of truth and absolute truth are disconnected.”

But this is all speculation. The very reason we are having this discussion is because no one really knows why these features would arise (the desire for meaning, love, hope, and our production of music, art, poetry, and such) from a purely naturalistic origin. Yes, there are many theories and many ideas out there that attempt to show how such is possible, but to date it is speculation only. Such is not based upon my intuition. It is a matter of the literature on the subject and the reality that in the philosophical departments of most, if not every, major university in the west, this is a debated subject and hardly settled. (Continued)

(Continued) Also, there are many assumptions in your statement. You assume something called “satisfaction.” How could a non-personal “mechanism” know what should satisfy us at the level of meaning? One first has to know we should be satisfied by, say, helping the poor rather than, say, stealing what little they have from them. And you use the word “reward.” How do we know what should be rewarding? Should a “reward” be the biggest bank account or number of husbands/wives? How could a mechanism that simply exists to build survival into biological organisms know what a “reward” was or what “satisfaction” was beyond making those terms mean nothing other than “survival?”

If those words you are using are simply code for “survival” then what is the difference between a prisoner and a “free” person and what possible use would music, art, poetry, beauty, and other such things have? None are necessary for survival. If all those words mean “survival” then there is no “meaning” in the sense we have been talking about. One eats to survive, but one must create or enjoy music for deeper reasons. (Continued)

If you wouldn’t mind, I would like you to explore some questions: Would you be willing to consider that your naturalism was something you found meaning in but was not necessarily true in any sort of objective way as to physical reality and our experience of that reality?

If not, would you suggest to others that they consider their own world-view to be such? Why or why not based upon your own thoughts regarding your own world-view?

Also, can you address the issue raised by Schaeffer in the Williams’ article: “No one, says Schaeffer, has ever worked out how to obtain the personal from the impersonal (a feat that would involve getting the greater from the lesser).”

I think we all agree that consciousness and our sense of meaning, our desire for beauty, love, hope, and our production/appreciation of music, art, and poetry are what make us human, what sets us apart from slugs, and is what makes us personal in a way a computer or tape-worm is not. We hopefully agree that this is greater than a single mechanistic principle (by definition non-personal/unconscious), so how can the greater arise from the lesser?

Good and interesting questions, and if I attempt to answer them all at once there is a real danger of my losing track of the issues, so with your forebearance I'll just focus on one aspect and then you can critique that or push me back to one of the other questions. I'm enjoying this dialogue by the way, so thank you for coming back in such a constructive way.

Much of what I say about the way something like l beauty can emerge from mechanistic mechanisms you will possibly point out is speculative, and in the way of any scientific hypothesis this is true. I would like to address the notions of hypotheses versus theories and attempt to build a definition of scientific evidence separately if I may.

The example used in the link is that there is something odd about evolution producing an appreciation of the beauty of The Rocky Mountains, so let's use that as an example. First, it is not true that all people find mountains beautiful in all situations. I have been half way up a mountain, with rock faces looming above, the temperature plummeting and the weather closing in and it was anything but beautiful. The cliched image of the beautiful mountain is one viewed at a distance on a clear day.

Now, evolution probably doesn't select individual responses, like finding a mountain beautiful. Nevertheless a beauty response may carry within it potentially ingrained reactions, as we have to spiders or snakes or in this case I would suggest fine weather. A mind that tends to pick up, feel optimistic and inclined towards activity in fine weather may well have had a survival advantage over one that insisted upon venturing out in the cold and dark. Speculation, yes, but the point is it is wrong to say selection can not contribute such a response and that is all this example seeks to promote.

More powerfully, a self aware mind, capable of thinking through choices and learning via language, can get a tremendous survival boost by associating particular images, memories and warnings with either positive or negative feelings. Our ability to educate is dependent upon such feedback mechanisms. There is no trouble seeing the survival advantage of a mind that can shade memories with emotions, as these motivate both repeat and avoidance behaviours. So, one reason we may find mountains beautiful may be that our culture is awash with positive representations of these images, and the work evolution has done is give us the mechanism for transferring this association. The human mind has evolved in the context of evolving culture, and some of the capacities most strongly selected for have probably been flexibility and the capacity for further learning.

So, on this count, evolutionary theory has no trouble explaining how a sense of beauty might emerge. The next step is that which is being undertaken, surveys of cultural responses to beauty, examination of cultural transmission in animals and so forth. We have our hypothesis and are now doing the testing, edging towards a theory of beauty. We're not there yet, but the claim that something as meaningful as beauty can not emerge from mechanistic processes seems premature.

The alternative hypothesis, that appreciation of beauty is innate but not built by selection requires an alternative mechanism, and I know of no such mechanism being proposed, let alone how it might be tested empirically. So, we have one hypothesis where here is no contradictory evidence, and loads of data supporting the suggested process, and one hypothesis with no supporting evidence. For me that's an easy choice.

You may be getting at something else here however, and that is not how beauty is judged and responded to, but rather how it feels, in which case the question is how do qualia emerge from the selective process? I may be misreading you here, this is potentially a murkier question and the spirit of my answer, that qualia are a misframed concept, will get us into a loop of conversation I've already had with Dianelos. I'm prepared to give it a go though.

Let me know where the weaknesses in the above are for you and we'll go from there.

Sorry to bombard you with responses but a point of clarification is going to help me. Upon reflection I realise I am not sure what you mean by the greater arising from the lesser.

If you mean how can a complex function emerge from a simple one then there appears to be no mystery. Think of the emergence of the eukaryote, or the parallel evolution of eyes, or even the chess playing capacity of a computer programme assembled from binary code.

If you (or rather Schaeffer) mean how does evolution fashion a complex response from simpler impulses then I hope my previous response showed that an answer in principle in available, and can be sharpened to an answer in practice through careful research.

The third possibility I can think you might mean is that conscious activity, with its motivations, perceptions, and sense of self, is some higher category of existence than any other mechanism we know of, and the question becomes how is this great divide crossed?

This is a harder one to answer because it is where two quite valid sets of assumptions can set us off on different paths. If we accept the premise, that conscious activity just is beyond physical explanation, then by definition the question is indeed unanswerable and becomes an excellent stepping off point for theism. I both acknowledge and respect that.

If however we reject the premise, and assume that consciousness just is physical activity, there is no problem at all and naturalism becomes an obvious path.

Personally I remain agnostic on this question, and so agnostic in broader terms too. I just don't think our understanding of the science is advanced enough for either side to claim a knock out. And so, I would suggest, more science is an excellent next step.

“Unless you simply mean, "world-views that survived” there must be some criteria you are thinking of.”

I was actually trying my hand, however awkwardly, at a “natural history (or sociology) of world views”, if you wish. I have a tendency to try and see things in an abstract manner and this is, maybe unfortunately, what you get :-)

In this context, a “successful” world view (WV) is effectively one that survives. The question then becomes why do some WV survive and are very successful (in this limited sense) and why do others fail? It is certainly not a random thing. By the way, this applies of course to all WV, theistic, naturalistic, and others. I readily admit that it is easier to find “problem areas” in other WV than in one's own and this I will choose my examples accordingly. But this is no way presupposes any superiority of WV, one way or the other. Obviously, as has been mentioned, a WV will fail when contradictory facts eventually catch up with it (say, the earth is not flat).

To get down to concrete matters, consider the question of the nuts and bolts of God's intervention in material matters. More precisely, we can think of how a “guided evolution” would work in detail: at what level would the interventions be, and so on, all these devilish details. For now, I am not really interested in the answers (which could only be wildly speculative anyway) but in the fact that the question is rarely, if ever, asked. One reason that is given is that theology is interested in the “why” and this is a “how” question (out of scope). Another reason is that this is applying scientific (or naturalistic) criteria to what is a theological issue (category error?). Fair enough. And I must confess that even evoking this issue feels quite strange: the idea that we have no business asking this kind of question seems quite “natural”. But when you think about this, it may not be that strange: reality, after all, does not divide itself according to human categories. Reality is the same for all while, of course, we probe it using various toolsets: philosophy, science, art, and so on, some more useful than others depending on the issue at hand. But no issue is purely philosophical or scientific; there are aspects of each in almost every issue. When seen this way, the “how” question of God's interventions makes perfect sense. There must a how. Then, why don't we ask?

This is my point relative to this natural history of WV. Can we consider the fact that these questions are not asked (or are considered as irrelevant) part of the “self-defence” mechanism of the theistic WV? That is, this idea has become part of the WV and serves to reinforce it. Again, I emphasize that there might (must?) be similar mechanisms within the naturalistic WV.

You ask many other interesting questions and I am not trying to evade them. I am on the road right now and time is very limited: I have hardly time enough to keep up with what others are writing! I will think about them however and, hopefully, will be able to come up with something.

“First, it is not true that all people find mountains beautiful in all situations. I have been half way up a mountain, with rock faces looming above, the temperature plummeting and the weather closing in and it was anything but beautiful.”

I’m not sure personal anecdotal evidence is going to be very helpful to you, especially since I would guess that a majority of people would probably say that they did find mountains beautiful and awe inspiring. Putting that aside, the original point wasn’t that “all” people find mountains beautiful in “all” situations, but rather that many people, over time, have attested to a feeling of awe and beauty in the presence of especially great and majestic mountain ranges.

“There is no trouble seeing the survival advantage of a mind that can shade memories with emotions, as these motivate both repeat and avoidance behaviours.”

This is simply too vague and weak an argument. Further, what could it possibly have to do with our creation and appreciation of music, poetry, art, and literature? And what could it possibly have to do with the recognition of beauty as necessary for survival? What “avoidance” behaviors would lead to the creation of music, art, and poetry? Why not “shade” memories to spend more time on actual survival features like strength, speed, and cunning? But I’m not even sure what “shading” memories even means. This is way too vague and speculative.

“The alternative hypothesis, that appreciation of beauty is innate but not built by selection requires an alternative mechanism, and I know of no such mechanism being proposed, let alone how it might be tested empirically.”

That is because no “mechanism” is being proposed. The alternative suggestion is “God” who is not a mechanism. A “mechanism” is unconscious, non-personal, and incapable of producing this sense and awareness of meaning and beauty we are speaking of. That is still the problem you have to resolve with your own world-view. Further, Natural Selection is not a “mechanism” which can be detected empirically as if we were to isolate some physical biological property which we called “Natural Selection.” Natural Selection is an abstract idea, a sign, something that stands for a process we are trying to describe. There is no “mechanism” which can be tested empirically either for the theist or atheist as far as what creates in us these desires for meaning and beauty and our creation of music and such. I think you assume way too much as far as what the process of evolution can tell us about the matters under discussion. The presupposition that these features are created by some purely physical materialistic “mechanism” is entirely a faith based belief.(Continued)

“The third possibility I can think you might mean is that conscious activity, with its motivations, perceptions, and sense of self, is some higher category of existence than any other mechanism we know of, and the question becomes how is this great divide crossed?”

While I wouldn't describe it exactly that way, yes, that is very close to what I have been talking about and I’m glad you see the difficulties involved.

“If however we reject the premise, and assume that consciousness just is physical activity, there is no problem at all and naturalism becomes an obvious path.”

But there is most certainly a problem and that is why we are all having this discussion. First though, I’m glad you see that much (all) of this is based not upon any so-called “fact” or piece of “evidence” of which we are all aware anyway (if we are not, someone please point it out because this whole issue could be resolved rather quickly if such exists!), but rather upon the assumptions or presuppositions we bring to bear upon the facts and evidence--physical reality and our experience of that reality.

The problem you still have to deal with is to tell us how meaning, the personal, the “humanness” we experience, the desire for beauty, hope, love, and our creation and appreciation of music, poetry, and such could arise from non-personal, meaningless, purposeless, accidental “mechanistic” sources that amount to nothing more than matter-in-motion and why “it” would produce such when none of these (aforementioned) qualities/expressions of beauty are necessary for survival. Does that make sense to you? These features fit and make sense if one's premise is theism, but they do not fit or follow from the premise of naturalism. Such is exactly why this is a debated issue.

Bernard, I’m afraid the rest of your responses are, in my view, just not very strong at all and I feel you did not address the more specific points I raised. I certainly appreciate your honesty and efforts however.

“In this context, a “successful” world view (WV) is effectively one that survives. The question then becomes why do some WV survive and are very successful (in this limited sense) and why do others fail? It is certainly not a random thing.”

But it is a random thing according to your world-view, right? Other than the pure guidance for survival (which even so described is still actually very problematic), a naturalistic world-view is ultimately purposeless and meaningless, right?

Putting that aside, do you really want to equate survival with being “successful’? Let’s put this in a human ethnic context: If group A ethnic group, lets say the German people of around 1938-1945 believe they are a more “fit” subgroup of the human species, and let’s say they act on that belief and “survive” exterminating all other species sub-groups they believe are less fit, is that “successful” to you? I’m sure you see my point. Obviously I know you don’t think such is successful; I’m just not sure how your logic is going to hold up if you hew the Naturalist line. If “successful” really just equals “survival”, then there is no place or need for meaning, beauty, music, art, poetry, or literature because none are crucial for survival and therefore, not needed (according to this logic), to be successful.

“To get down to concrete matters, consider the question of the nuts and bolts of God's intervention in material matters. More precisely, we can think of how a “guided evolution” would work in detail: at what level would the interventions be, and so on, all these devilish details.”

What Christian theology or belief holds the view of creation you are describing? It’s as if one were to believe that the engineer of a car was physically located in the engine compartment turning the pistons by hand. He is not. The engineer imagined and designed the car to run under its own power. Creation is much the same way. And I’m not sure why this mystery should bother you that much. After all, you have the greater mystery on your hands as noted above to Bernard.

The thing that attracted me to this blog was the central thesis that one can be both a theist and reasonable, and the careful attempt to use reason to undermine the easy atheistic stereotypes of all those with religious conviction. That's a useful project and one I support wholeheartedly. Many highly reasonable people do hold religious beliefs. Admittedly reason will tend towards shaping these into a particular style of beliefs, specifically the reasonable believer is likely to conclude that it is also reasonable not to believe. I have enjoyed the fact that people with beliefs very different than my own have been prepared to engage, explore and discuss their ideas. That is exactly the flavour of world I wish to live in.

All this preamble is my way of getting to the observation that if a case is put to you that reflects not a single personal opinion, but rather a century and a half of careful scholarship, I would appreciate it if you didn't simply dismiss it out of hand as abstract and speculative. Among other things, you run the risk of reinforcing the stereotype that a forum like this can so usefully undermine.

The case for the evolution of a sense of beauty is anything but speculation. If I had the time and facility to develop this idea over hundreds of pages I could present the carefully collected evidence, but it is hardly necessary as any good book on evolutionary theory will give you the basics.

Note I don't think you are wrong to be suspicious of the naturalistic explanation of consciousness. That is an entirely reasonable response to two strongly competing intuitions. But you are quite wrong to hold out against the possibility of evolution leading to music, beauty, art etc. I will, perhaps naively, have one last attempt at sketching out the basics of this mechanism. If you choose to again dismiss this as speculation then so be it. Evolution is a splendid theory, one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, and no impediment at all to theistic beliefs, and I do enjoying sharing my fascination for it.

The stumbling block seems to be the issue of survival. Differential rates of survival and reproduction are indeed the filter by which change over time is directed, but this in itself does not imply that the emerging life forms will themselves behave as if motivated by survival.

The iconic example is the worker bee. It will sacrifice its own life in order to protect the hive. This sounds odd from a survival point of view. How could a survivalist selection programme select for such suicidal behaviour? The answer is a mathematical one, and is related to the patterns of genetic relatedness within the hive. Look it up if you wish to dirty your hands with the mathematics and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Nature is full of beautiful exhibitionists who are apparently wasting massive amounts of time and energy creating art. Look at some of the bower bird mating rituals. Again, the explanation is beautifully simple. So long as the behaviour skewers the odds of reproductive success, selection cares not one jot about the motivation of the dancer.

And so it is with people. Consider humour. What if, over time, women who were attracted to men with good sense of humour were relatively more successful at keeping their children alive? Pure speculation here, I am demonstrating the mechanism only, but a sense of humour may be a good proxy for mental agility in general. This agility, being in part inherited, ensures better equipped offspring. Note the women did not choose a funny mate for this reason. They just liked laughing. But, if a selective advantage emerges, then over time men will become funnier and women more attracted to humour in their partners. All for no reason other than the mathematical imperative of selection. They're not doing it because they want to survive, survival doesn't have to enter their heads.

All of this is to make a simple and vital point. Selection does not create creatures fixated on surviving. It creates creatures fixated on whatever behaviours have led to survival advantages in the past. To use you prison example, any of our ancestors that did not yearn to roam about and meet others are quickly selected out of the population, for obvious reasons.

I don't know if this helps at all, or if you are in any way motivated to understand evolution better. There is no reason why you should be. But please don't dismiss this wondrous mechanism without first making an honest effort to get your head around it. That attitude is grist for the Dawkins mill I'm afraid.

“All this preamble is my way of getting to the observation that if a case is put to you that reflects not a single personal opinion, but rather a century and a half of careful scholarship, I would appreciate it if you didn't simply dismiss it out of hand as abstract and speculative.”

I apologize if you felt I was coming across as dismissive. I’m trying to be honest and I honestly felt that the example of “shading” and your other lines of thought were weak and vague (I’m sure you feel many times the same way when reading my own views) and to believe such is, in my mind, not the same as being dismissive, but I’m sorry if it seemed that way. I also wasn’t saying that your entire argument was based upon a single personal opinion—I noted that specifically to your personal example of reacting to a mountain.

“Nature is full of beautiful exhibitionists who are apparently wasting massive amounts of time and energy creating art. Look at some of the bower bird mating rituals.”

But here you are missing the greater matter under discussion. No one is saying there are no examples of beauty in nature, they are everywhere. The question is why do we think they are beautiful. Where does this sense on the part of humans come from that can view such not "just" (reduced to) a means to survival, but as representing something deeper about our world. Why is it we normally don’t see this stuff as “just” a means to survival? We see it always-already as something more. That is why songs, poems, and stories are written. Your example of women being attracted to men with a sense of humor falls into the same problem. Why do we even have that sense? Why is it attractive? It could be otherwise, right? We could all look around presently and say, “Well Natural Selection did all this so we could survive,” just as one could say, “God created us this way because it is reflective of God’s creative being,” but I’m asking you step back and consider the question but which source is more likely produce these features (desire for meaning, beauty, hope, love and the production/appreciation of music, poetry, and literature). Let’s forget survival for a second; how does a non-personal, non-humorous, non-conscious “mechanism” produce these features along with this thing we call “humor” to begin with?

“All of this is to make a simple and vital point. Selection does not create creatures fixated on surviving. It creates creatures fixated on whatever behaviours have led to survival advantages in the past.”

This seem tautological to me. Help me out; it appears, to me anyway, you have said the same thing twice.

It may not seem so, perhaps my ignorance is too telling, but I actually have read and done quite a bit of digging into evolutionary theory and I love and appreciate the work that has gone into learning about our biological world. Again though, just like mistaking “science” for Philosophical Naturalism, one must not mistake the “science” of evolution with Philosophical Naturalism, which is a metaphysical world-view.

I certainly appreciate the thoughtfulness and effort you are making here to try and help me understand your position better and I feel the same about JP’s efforts.

Bernard said, “All of this is to make a simple and vital point. Selection does not create creatures fixated on surviving. It creates creatures fixated on whatever behaviours have led to survival advantages in the past.”

Darrell replied: "This seem tautological to me. Help me out; it appears, to me anyway, you have said the same thing twice."

I want to see if I can help clarify the distinction that I think Bernard is trying to make (Bernard: correct me if I'm wrong).

1. I am directly motivated by a desire to survive or reproduce. For example, I recognize that car accidents happen and that seatbelts increase survival rates. I want to increase my odds of survival in the case of an accident, and so I cultivate a habit of strapping myself in every time I get in the car. Or I want to have children and so my wife and I stop using birth control and start trying to identify the most fertile periods of the month.

2. I am directly motivated by an emotion--such as fear or lust--which is directly correlated with survival or reproductive behaviors. For example, I'm on my porch and see a bear running aggressively towards me. Terror causes me to rush into the house and slam the door. Or I'm on the same porch and a neighbor approaches me with clearly seductive intentions. I'm filled with lust and we end up having sex.

3. I am directly motivated by an emotion or desire--such as an appreciation for beauty--which is not connected to my desire to survive or reproduce (it's not because I want to survive or reproduce that I want to expose myself to beauty), and which is such that the behavior it inspires (spending time at the edge of a valley looking at the vista) has no direct bearing on my survival or reproductive success.

I think Bernard's point is that (assuming motivational dispositions are heritable), natural selection will tend to favor any motivational disposition which leads to an increased representation in subsequent generations of organisms possessing THAT motivational disposition. And while motivational dispositions of types 1 and 2 above can and do serve this function, motivational dispositions of type 3 can as well--assuming the right kinds of environmental conditions.

If and when a motivational disposition of type 3 proves to enhance reproductive success in a given environment, the complex genetic structures which code for it will increase in frequency so long as that environment persists--perhaps to the point where it becomes dominant. And so, it will be the case that this motivational disposition came to become dominant because of its positive effect on the survival and reproductive success of organisms who possessed that motivational disposition.

But WHAT a person motivated by a disposition of type 3 is "fixated on" is not survival or reproduction, but something else entirely--and this can be true even if it just so happens to be the case that, given a complex set of environmental circumstances, fixation on this "something else" led to survival or reproductive advantages in the past.

The deeper question is why a motivational disposition of type 3--if it has not direct connection to survival or reproduction--would ever increase the reproductive success of its bearers. There are two ways this might happen: directly and indirectly.

It happens directly when those who possess this disposition are motivated to engage in behaviors that happen to lead THEM to have more babies. It happens indirectly when those who possess this disposition are motivated to engage in behaviors that happen to lead OTHERS with the same disposition to have more babies ("kin selection" is an example).

Could the human disposition to devote extensive resources on making and experiencing beauty have evolved in either of these ways? Here, as far I know, all we have at present are "just so stories"--that is, plausible accounts of how it might have happened.

Such stories are, indeed, "speculative." That is, they are not intended to be descriptive accounts of natural history but rather narratives whose function is to reveal the coherence of supposing that a certain mode of explanation is available given a certain set of facts (similar "just so" stories are offered by theodicists in an attempt to show the coherence of theism given the reality of evil).

Part of the difficulty of moving beyond "just so" stories lies with the incredible contingency of natural history. Imagine if you will that at some distant point in history, a pair of oddball early humans had a "beauty response" to the view from a high elevation--a response so strong that they thought living there was worth the colder weather, less accessible game, etc. The rest of the tribe thought they were crazy and settled in the open country below. Then a devastating plague swept through--carried by the fleas on the backs of rodents that didn't wander into higher elevations. The couple on the mountain survived to pass on their aesthetic preferences, while the population on the savannah was decimated.

I'm not saying anything like this happened. I'm saying that things LIKE this happen all the time in natural history--playing an important role in which characteristics tend to dominate in a species. But while scientists have a good shot at figuring out general conditions in the distant past that might have driven evolution, they have a much harder time knowing which chance events in the distant past might have fortuitously lined up with contingent genetic variations to explain the species characteristics we see today.

(By the way, I think that these same facts help to explain why "theistic evolution," the theory that divine purposiveness guides the overall course of evolution, does not require one to believe in a God who circumvents the mechanisms of genetic inheritance, variation, and natural selection described in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. Saying that God guides the process does not as such answer any of the questions--about what happened and the mechanisms that drove the process--that evolutionary biologists are trying to answer.)

The business of just so stories is important. It has a valid and an invalid application. When we use such stories to show the process is plausible, then they are a helpful and important rebuttal to the idea that 'it just couldn't have happened this way.' When they are used as best explanations of what actually happened, as in some of the excesses of evolutionary psychology, they exceed their brief.

A word perhaps on selection. Darrel is quite right, the interpretation of science often does exceed science's brief, and nowhere is this better seen that in the metaphor of survival of the fittest, a most unfortunate phrase that has focussed us wrongly on the notion of survival. Natural Selection is not so much a theory as an implication of a theory. If it was the core idea, then it would reduce to survival of the survivors, giving the very tautology Darrell has sensed a whiff of.

Darwin's key insight was simply that if we have heritability of traits and variable rates of reproductive success, and if there is a more or less stable relationship between these two over time, then change will occur: modification through descent. So selection is simply an implication of the first three propositions. So we don't go looking for evidence of selection, we go looking for evidence of the propositions themselves.

And this leads to an answer to Darrel's question. Why prefer a natural selection explanation to a creationist one? Well, Darwin's propositions are highly predictive. Genes were discovered and the process of inheritance is understood better by the day. Crucially distributions of noncoding DNA sequences match perfectly well the process outlined by Darwin. This is the most remarkable piece of evidence we have for selection having done its work and the just so stories become irrelevant.

It is still valid to ask the difficult questions about consciousness, but to wonder about whether or not selection can have given arise to a sense of beauty is to question the nature of the evidence and needs to be done by examining and critiquing exactly this evidence.

The other very important reason we should prefer a naturalistic explanation is that it can lead directly to discoveries that can help us. For example, many people struggle with dyslexia. By assuming something as unlikely as language developed via selection, we are prompted to hunt for those genes which affect language development. This can lead to early identification and treatment in the first instance, and potentially new therapies in the second. This is tremendously important.

I just reread your last paragraph. To my mind, the guided evolution you mention is either creationism, or nothing at all. I'm pretty sure you don't intend it to be the first.

So, to clarify your position, what does it mean to say God can guide a process without in any way interfering with any of the things the biologist is interested in, which is to say the circumstances and mechanisms of change? Are you able to provide a concrete example of what you have in mind so as to ease my fears that there might be a closet creationist lurking there somewhere? I don't think this is the case, but the just-so-story line is also often employed by creationists, and because the reasoning is identical whether applied to an eye, a knee joint or an appreciation of art, there is at least cause for concern here. Reassure us all, please.

“Such stories are, indeed, "speculative." That is, they are not intended to be descriptive accounts of natural history but rather narratives whose function is to reveal the coherence…”

Well, exactly. That was part of my point regarding the vagueness and speculation. The problem, for me, is that many write as if this view (the one presented by Bernard) is pretty much settled science and evolutionary “fact” or that is how I interpret their writing anyway. Perhaps that is my fault and they mean no such thing.

Bernard, to be specific, when you write something like:

“The case for the evolution of a sense of beauty is anything but speculation. If I had the time and facility to develop this idea over hundreds of pages I could present the carefully collected evidence, but it is hardly necessary as any good book on evolutionary theory will give you the basics.”

And:

“All this preamble is my way of getting to the observation that if a case is put to you that reflects not a single personal opinion, but rather a century and a half of careful scholarship…”

It sounds to me like these theories are settled science and fact to you. For instance, when you note “carefully collected evidence,” I would caution that such is also interpreted evidence and, as already noted, there is a huge difference between evolutionary science and Philosophical Naturalism. Plus, it is not as if Christians are unaware of that same evidence and believe it also fits with the Christian belief regarding creation. But, perhaps I misread you and if so, please clarify for me.

“3. I am directly motivated by an emotion or desire--such as an appreciation for beauty--which is not connected to my desire to survive or reproduce (it's not because I want to survive or reproduce that I want to expose myself to beauty), and which is such that the behavior it inspires (spending time at the edge of a valley looking at the vista) has no direct bearing on my survival or reproductive success.”

“It happens directly when those who possess this disposition are motivated to engage in behaviors that happen to lead THEM to have more babies. It happens indirectly when those who possess this disposition are motivated to engage in behaviors that happen to lead OTHERS with the same disposition to have more babies ("kin selection" is an example).”

Eric, thank you for unpacking those ideas. I am aware of these lines of thought. I think there several problems with number 3. First, it still doesn’t solve the problem of telling us where this sense (of even desiring, recognizing, and having that consious awareness of something profound in this beauty) would arise from; in other words, how or why could an impersonal, unconscious, mechanistic process produce it in the first place, whether it was helpful for survival or not? Secondly, there is no connection given, whatsoever, for why those who appreciate and desire beauty would then “engage in behaviors” that would lead them to have more babies or influence others to propagate. Where is the connection? If one cannot argue a connection necessary for survival then it simply dissolves into an even greater speculation, in my view.

Without knowing what the Christian creation beliefs you refer to are, I can't really comment. Some Christian creation beliefs we would both agree are plain wrong, others fit with evolution quite nicely.

So, what do I think is plain fact? Let me be clear here, by plain fact I mean the very best model we have available, one so well supported by the evidence that no other explanation gets a look in. So, to set an example for reference, a fact in the way the earth being round rather than flat is a fact, or that night and day are the result of it turning on its axis is a fact. That sort of fact. We can modify both the above statements of course, the earth isn't exactly round, its spinning causes a slight bulging I'm told, but you get the drift.

I'm not sure if you read my previous posts to Eric, but the just-so-stories are not used as evidence for evolution as such. They are used as hypothesis engines often, giving us somewhere to go looking, and they are certainly used to counter the argument 'it just couldn't happen that way'. Sometimes, the evidence around such an explanation solidifies to the point well past speculation, but often not. Karl Popper made this point, challenging evolutionists to show their field consisted of more than post hoc story telling. And the challenge was met.

Here is what I would say is so well established by science that fact is the very best word. Life on earth, in all its glorious variety, is the result of the process of evolution. That is, all life forms are related, commonly descended. The process that has driven this change is one of random mutation interacting with an ever changing environment to produce changing gene populations. The process is entirely unguided.

A variety of mechanisms are important, from catastrophic extra-terrestrial events, to neutral drift, to horizontal gene transfer and even the odd symbiotic merger. The development of complex structures however is best explained by the process of natural selection, where the distribution changes are the result of different levels of functionality.

The very best evidence for this, as already mentioned, comes from the rather startling prediction that the degree of similarity found in non-coding sequences of DNA will match the evolutionary relationships constructed by other forms of evidence (morphology, coding sequences, fossils, geographic distribution, etc). This prediction has been tested, again and again, the entire field of phylogenetics is based upon its success, and it is yet to be found to be wanting.

And yes, one could compile hundreds of pages of alternative forms of evidence, but let's just focus on this one for now. Einstein predicted that if relativity held light would be bent by gravity, and thanks to an eclipse the prediction was tested. He was right and General Relativity was considered rock solid as a result. This is how science progresses. Any Christian explanation that claims the form of evolution outlined above is incorrect is, I'm afraid, just plain wrong.

As with any scientific explanation a huge amount remains unknown. One can insert God into these gaps if one wishes, it's what Creationists do, and it's also exactly the reasoning Scientology also employs. This is why I am keen to here Eric denounce the entire approach, including his sometimes veiled references to guided evolution.

Let me make one quick point that I think has not been made yet. Forgive me if I have missed it.

While evolution constrains us in various ways, in no way does it control us. Evolution has equipped us with a number of capabilities (functions), a number of them having evolved for reasons related to survival. But it so happens that among all these capabilities is one that allows us to use all the others for our own ends. The sense of beauty may have evolved, say, as part of sexual selection (for my argument, it does not matter really why) but it is there for us to do whatever we want with it – up to appreciating Beethoven. We also need to consider that our environment is completely different from the one of our ancestors and that it may trigger behaviours very difficult to explain in terms of natural selection alone.

Natural selection may have established our “initial conditions” but it is no longer in control. Cultural evolution is now the dominant force and this is in this context that all these things we've been discussing happen.

Darrell: as I said, I am travelling (and will be for the next 2 weeks) and have little time. I will try to answer some of your specific points in the next couple of days.

Unfortunately, there is not a single aspect of the “facts” you bring up as to how we understand evolution to have worked that would not be also compatible with a theistic beginning to life and the universe. As I’ve pointed out before, this conversation is not about some “fact” or piece of “evidence” that someone has missed, where one of us would say, “Oh, I didn’t know that—if I would have, I would be a believer (or an atheist).”

The problem arises when one begins to believe the speculative narrative you have been suggesting is also a “fact” like knowing the earth is round. One cannot jump from a “fact” like the earth is round, to “I think our desire for beauty arose because certain people who enjoyed sunrises (for some reason) then began to have more babies (for some reason) than the other people who did not enjoy sunrises (for some reason) as much,” and conflate the two as if they were both facts. They are two entirely different propositions. Again, I am not trying to be dismissive, but we have to keep the two in perspective.

Just as an aside, the speculative view above doesn’t even address the greater issue. As a thought experiment, if, for some reason, the people who did not enjoy sunrises had more babies and we end up being a people who do not care about such things and did not produce music, poetry, art, or literature we would have to believe that it would not ultimately matter either way. If the desire for beauty or the non-desire is simply a chance, meaningless, purposeless event that could have happened or not, then either way it is reduced to nothing. If there is no objective, out-side myself, reflection or telos to our desire for beauty, love, hope, purpose, and meaning, then we are truly like fish finding ourselves not in water but on dry land. Again, a purely naturalistic account does not seem to fit with our experience and sense that these desires are truly more than the result of matter-in-motion.

This discussion is really about which narrative makes the most sense of the facts and evidence as it fits the life we really experience and of what we know of the human condition.

I am still hoping you can address my question regarding whether or not you would consider your own view meaningful for you personally, but not necessarily true in any objective way as to how the world actually is.

“Natural selection may have established our “initial conditions” but it is no longer in control. Cultural evolution is now the dominant force and this is in this context that all these things we've been discussing happen.”

This sounds a little like the deism narrative or the absent clock maker narrative, where God wound the clock up but then walked away and now everything just runs on its own. Putting that aside, I think one of Eric’s original points is that somehow our desire for beauty and our appreciation/production of music rises above a purely cultural or naturalistic origin or explanation. Culture and biology all have a part to play, but this desire cannot be reduced to “just” only culture or biology—I think that is the assertion being made. Eric correct me if I'm wrong regarding your original assertion/suggestion.

Bernard--I probably can't do justice to your question/concern about the relationship between theistically-guided evolution and "creationism" in a comment, and so will offer here only some inadequate remarks along with a promissory note to explore these issues more fully in a later post (In fact, since this topic relates to some things we'll be covering in my upcoming philosophy of religion course, I may offer a detailed post on it in tandem with that part of the course).

So, here are my inadequate remarks:

1. I am not a creationist in either of the dominant contemporary senses--first, where that term refers to an adherent to "special creation" (denying common heritage of all organisms and positing that God independently created each species); second, where that term refers to an adherent to "creation science" broadly construed to include its contemporary offshoot, "Intelligent Design Theory." By creation science, I mean the view that (a) positing the activity of a supernatural creator can be a legitimate scientific explanation for observed phenomena and (b) there are observed phenomena such that the best scientific explanation for them is to posit supernatural activity. I reject both (a) and (b).

2. EVERY theist is a creationist in a much broader sense--the sense according to which being a creationist just means one believes that the universe was created by a transcendent reality characterized by purposive agency.

3. I'm not sure where I stand on theistic evolution in the sense defined above--as belief in the biological theory of evolution paired with the belief that the history of evolutionary development was guided by divine purposiveness. What I WILL say about it is this: (a) I don't think we have any empirical evidence about the course of evolution that somehow amounts to scientific evidence in favor of theistic evolution, and I am highly skeptical of the contention even that there might BE evidence of this kind; (b) I don't think we have any evidence about the course of evolution that somehow amounts to scientific evidence AGAINST theistic evolution, and I am highly skeptical of the contention even that there might BE evidence of this kind (obviously, here, I need to say more about why I think that strong evidence for the operation of the mechanisms of evolutionary change uncovered by science doesn't count as evidence against such change being guided by divine purposiveness).

4. There is clear scientific evidence that evolution is unguided in a particular sense--namely, that there is no correlation between the likelihood of a particular genetic mutation/variation occuring and that mutation's being advantageousto the organism that possesses it. That is, the fact that a mutation would be advantageous does not make it any more likely that the mutation will occur. The variations that occur in species thus occur without regard for the organism's adaptability or success--and are unguided in this very precise sense. Any defensible account of theistically "guided" evolution cannot defy this evidence, and so must construe what is meant by guidance in a different way.

Our two sets of responses appear to be heading off in quite different directions now. I'm at a loss as to how to bring the conversation at least on to the same topic. Let me just repeat, I don't believe theism and evolution are of themselves incompatible. I think Stephen Jay Gould's metaphor of non-overlapping magistrata is a good one. Nor do I think that speculative stories of how particular traits were selected for stand as evidence in themselves of evolution. So it's difficult for me to defend my position against your two main charges simply because on these issues we are in agreement.

I will try to follow up on Eric's notion of guided evolution a little more, as clarifying exactly which mechanisms science supports, precludes or has nothing to say on seems to be a crucial part of the greater project in discussion here. Feel free to jump in and call me on points you think I'm missing.

Thanks for that clarification. I am interested in the notion of where one can insert a notion of divine guidance without being overrun by the evidence. It's a bit like the sun bather constantly having to move their spot in the face of a rising tide. The question becomes where the high tide mark sits.

Your last sentence touches on this. The theist, you suggest, must construe what is meant by guidance in a different way. I agree that this is exactly the task at hand if the metaphor of guidance is to be saved. It is not impossible that the course of evolution is influenced by an outside force, but it is true I think that no evidence exists that would lead us to conclude any particular form of influence is occurring.

One problem then arises I suppose. In the absence of evidence of guidance occurring, it may seem that the rule is; any solution that leaves no evidence is allowable. Yet a young earth creationist, following this rule, may propose that God has carefully faked the evidence in order to lead us from the true facts, as a way of testing the resolve of the faithful. We would both reject this approach I suspect. Yet it is not impossible, in the sense that we can imagine it, and it is consistent with the evidence insomuch as it can explain it away. What grounds then are we to use to dismiss this, and can this same principle be extended in such a way that some more moderate form of guided evolution is still a reasonable belief?

This will depend on how guidance is defined, and you have been careful here not to offer your conception of this. I'll not offer an opinion then; if you choose at some stage to develop such a notion it would be interesting to discuss it further.

This sounds a little like the deism narrative or the absent clock maker narrative [...]

This is an interesting comparison. But, nevertheless, the point is, I think, very important. Natural selection has now an extremely limited role in our evolution. Its pace is so slow compared to the speed of cultural evolution that it is all but negligible. In a sense, evolution has produced a being who is now capable of taking charge of his own destiny and of using its extraordinary capabilities for its own ends. This can make the task of relating a specific aspect of our behaviour to an evolutionary adaptation very difficult – to use a not-too-pertinent example: what is the evolutionary advantage of bobsleigh racing?

We disagree as to whether this could have produced all we've been talking about here (beauty and so on). Which leads me to my next point.

What Christian theology or belief holds the view of creation you are describing?

I probably misunderstand something important here. Eric has touched on the question of guided evolution and has promised more, so I am not sure where you want to go with this meanwhile. I will just state what seems obvious: if there is no divine intervention in evolution then our sense of beauty&al have evolved in an entirely naturalistic manner.

do you really want to equate survival with being “successful’?

My point here is that it could be interesting to study the “ecology” of world views in this manner, without any reference to truthfulness or moral values. Maybe successful is an unfortunate choice of word but I certainly didn't imply any moral superiority to world views that survive. Don't you think such a study can be interesting? What features do successful WV have in common, and so on? I was just throwing ideas off the top of my head but I would assume that such a thing have been studied in one form or another. If anybody knows, I would appreciate a reference.

You are right to point out that I have not commented on Williams' article. I will try to get to it.

Can you perhaps clarify a terminology thing for me? I've been thinking about a comment you made and realised I may have been mistaken about the way the word theism is commonly used. You used the term purposive agency, suggesting all theists are creationists in the sense that the entity responsible for the universe has this characteristic.

If this is the case, then one very appealing religious metaphor (appealing to me I mean) sits outside theism, and I was wondering if this is the way the generally accepted definition falls. The metaphor I speak of is one of a transcendent entity that is not purposive. So, the universe exists ultimately because of some unmoved mover, some thing that has as part of its nature the necessity of being, and all existence flows from this. We, by some unknown mechanism, have access to glimpses of this transcendence, which if followed up on give us experience of the realm beyond our physical experience. Through this process flows our sense of goodness, spiritual yearning and so forth. But there is no purposive agency. What exists exists because it could be no other way. Such is the nature of the ultimate reality. The transcendent being transcends motivation and choice, these are human concepts, tools to allow us to make a tentative approach to truth.

I don't hold this belief myself, but something of this style would be attractive to me should the appeals of agnosticism ever fade (in part because it would get around the problem of a purposive creator choosing evolution as a means of creating, it's such a cruel and wasteful process). And my question is, would this by standard definitions not be theism? If not, what is the term used for this category of beliefs?

"I probably misunderstand something important here. Eric has touched on the question of guided evolution and has promised more, so I am not sure where you want to go with this meanwhile. I will just state what seems obvious: if there is no divine intervention in evolution then our sense of beauty&al have evolved in an entirely naturalistic manner."

No, that is not quite right. Christian theology holds that there was a time when the universe was not. Christian theology also holds (I am being very general and broad here) that God brought biological life into existence and that especially with "human life" there is something of the imprint or "image" of God, but this is all from the prime beginning point (whenever that was) so there is no "intervention" as that suggests something happening in the middle or after the originating event. And it is from this originating event where we believe that the primal desire for beauty arises and this makes much more sense that it would have a personal, purposeful, and meaningful source (God) than to expect it would arise from a non-personal, non-purposeful, and ultimately meaningless "mechanistic" material source.

This also would mean that our sense of beauty is not simply cultural or arose as a survival feature but would make it objective in the sense that its source and telos was God, this wholly Other, this person who is not us. Otherwise, beauty becomes nothing really. For instance, if our culture were to change to where beauty was considered to be (I’m going over-board here, but you get my point) a picture of tortured kittens then one could never truly criticized it, one could only say, “well, that is different.”

I just posted a rather lengthy comment, in reply to Bernard, on the meaning of "theism" and its relation to purposive agency. It appeared on this duscussion thread--and now is gone. Don't have time right now to recreate it...but maybe it will mysteriously return from whatever cyber-vacuum it vanished into. If not, I'll try again when I have more time.

1) Theism can be and sometimes is used more broadly than I used it in my previous comment here, to include "impersonal Gods" (the God of Spinoza, if you will).

2) MOST of those who call themselves theists have in mind a conception of God which includes the traits of agency and purposiveness.

3) The controversy over free will shows that the concept of agency is itself ill-defined--a vagueness which spills into diverse God-concepts even among those who agree that God is an agent.

4) In my book I look for something common to those theists who are sincerely DEVOTED to God--and as a result define God functionally as that whose existence would fulfill the "ethico-religious hope," that is, the hope that reality is fundamentally on the side of the good--a definition which leaves open the question, "What traits must this something have in order for its existence to fulfill this hope?"

5) In my book I offered a sketchy argument for the view that this something would have to be characterized by purposive agency in order to FULLY satisfy the ethico-religious hope.

6) Since writing the book, I've stumbled across the work of philosopher John Leslie, who offers a Platonic account of creation that, if actual, would I think fulfill the ethico-religious hope even though it doesn't regard the fundamental source of being as a purposive agent.

7) Leslie's writings would be a rich treasure trove of ideas for a fiction writer who writes books like Bernard's GENESIS (which I'm in the middle of reading)...and so I recommended Leslie's IMMORTALITY DEFENDED to Bernard as offering a concise summary of Leslie's iconoclastic pantheistic Platonism.

As far as blogs go, this one is rather on the slow side and this suits me well: one post every few days, time enough to ponder things and so on. But you wouldn't believe how fast everything seems to be going when you have only a few minutes to check on it every day or two! I fear I will have to delay answering some of your interesting and difficult questions until I have more time on my hands (say in a couple of weeks). Hopefully the topics will come back or, if they don't, simply raise the questions again and I will do my best to explain my positions. For now I will try one or two general comments on the subject of Williams's article. It is a long article and, as I cannot do justice to it in a few paragraphs, this will certainly be unsatisfactory. This is probably another topic we will have to get back to.

“metaphysical naturalism currently explains all human capacities in terms of their ability to enhance survival”

This idea (that all capabilities are adaptations) is used over and over again to show naturalism's shortcomings. But things are not that simple. Many “features” are not adaptations at all: for example, they may appear as side effects of other capabilities that are themselves adaptations. Evolution is a very messy business and produces designs that are far from perfect, building as needed on top of what was there before, without any foresight.

Moreover, as I have tried to point out, one capability we have is to use what evolution has provided us for our own ends, to do things that have nothing to do with their survival values. The capacity to appreciate good wine is certainly not an adaptation – wine does not exist in the wild. Where does that come from? It is certainly built on top of more basic capabilities and enhanced by some form of training (it is an acquired taste). Many capabilities we have are of this sort and can be explained only by referring to cultural evolution. It seems clear to me that our sense of beauty can be explained this way.

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.”

What does that mean? At some level desires or needs exist to cause organisms to engage in some activity or another. If we didn't have a desire for food, we would starve. Same for sex and so on. But what about “a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy”? This relates to what I said above. To simplify, consider the following: we have a built-in desire not to get hurt (this has survival value); with time we start to imagine us not dying (maybe at first not as an easy feat as we could think); then the transfer of a natural satisfiable desire into this illusory one follows.

Overall the arguments are at best circumstantial and rest on this idea that theism provides a better “explanation”. It is true that, at first sight, theism may seem to “make sense, that saying that God through some unspecified means makes us aware of himself or of beauty and so on may be satisfying. There are two reasons for this: first, the statement is so general it is almost meaningless (there seems to be an implicit rule against going into any detail and it is then that difficulties arise); second, science is hard and naturalistic explanations must meet extremely demanding standards (while theistic explanations always remain extremely vague).

A last word on the value of intuition.

The other day I saw the Hubble 3D IMAX movie. (By the way, everybody should see this; even if you don't care for the astronaut bits, the rest alone is absolutely worth it.) You're shown all kinds of extraordinary stuff about the universe, stars being born, and so on. This is fabulous stuff. And at some point, of course, you start to wonder: what is the meaning of all this? Can all these absolutely unimaginable wonders be purposeless? Can we bear the “pitiless indifference” of it all? Some would call it a religious experience, of course.

As Eric mentions somewhere, this feeling we have must mean something. We feel it must. But the question is: does it tell us something about the universe? Or, does it tell us something about us? Here views differ. I suspect you would choose the former while I do chose the latter. Why? Let me sketch an argument.

Why would evolution provide us with a means to intuitively understand the universe? Consider that all these things Hubble shows us didn't exist at all for primitive humans: where would that intuition come from? In my view, thinking that, evolved recently from primitive primates on an insignificant piece of cosmic debris, humans have a direct access to ultimate reality and, moreover, that this ultimate reality astonishingly shares human values, is just hubris.

On the other hand we are creatures that always seek meanings and there are good evolutionary reasons for this. We need to understand our environment, that this area is dangerous because tigers roam there and so on. We evolved in an environment where things have meanings (this is food), where animals have purpose (this tiger wants to kill me), and so on. It is entirely natural and essential that we developed a need to understand these meanings and purposes. And, once exposed to the cosmos, it is perfectly understandable that we do the same. But there is no reason to expect that we can succeed.

An example of evolution in action recent fatherhood has brought me into close contact with is that of the great survival trade offs that came about as a result of the expanding human brain. I'm told that even with all our medical advances, the day a woman is most likely to die is on the occasion of her first giving birth. Evolution has in essence played the great negatives of danger to the mother and the vulnerability of the child in its first years against the apparently massive advantages of greater processing power, the whole solution being played out within the constraints of bipedalism.

And the striking thing for me is the realisation that the tentative equilibrium reached by evolution is by no means benign. It has brought about, as part of its solution, untold death, misery and suffering. I can see no obvious reason why such a solution was inevitable, what if higher intelligence had reached its current peak beneath the oceans for instance, the trade-offs would have been different and arguably less brutal. This make-do, patchwork quality of evolution I can stomach, and even admire, if I see it as a process of fumbling chance. But put a guiding force in there, even if it's just at the initial point of creation, and the the moral waters become murky for me.

If the guiding forces choice to push creation in this way had a libertarian quality, then are we to conclude God just doesn't much like women? If, as Eric suggested, it is possible to see God as constrained in choices by the goodness of the product, then what is inherently good about this form of suffering? I know there are arguments regarding the general benefit of an imperfect world, but when the physical solution so explicitly targets one sex it becomes harder to imagine how this could be constructed.

About Me

Eric, an award-winning scholar and writer, teaches philosophy at Oklahoma State University. His first book, IS GOD A DELUSION? A REPLY TO RELIGION'S CULTURED DESPISERS, was named one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles of 2009. His other books include GOD'S FINAL VICTORY (co-authored with John Kronen) and (available later this year) THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE: SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND THE CHRISTIAN LOVE ETHIC.